Janet Retter

Janet Retter was an extremely talented bobbin painter. She was active during the late 1990s up until when she retired in 2023.

Janet painted in watercolours which is what gave her bobbins their ethereal quality. Many of her bobbins came with a matching painted spangle bead

Janet signed many of her bobbins with a faint J on the head.  So far as we know she did not sign her bobbins JR on the body/shaft/tail. We’ve not yet worked out who the other JR is.

Click here for the album.

From Janet's website (via the wayback machine) on how to choose a bobbin:

• Holly is my favourite wood for painting. It has good weight and the pale biscuit colour helps the watercolour paint to stand out crisply. It is ideal for almost all subjects and particularly good for pets and animals. First the wood is primed with white gouache and then sanded down to help even the grain and get as smooth a surface as possible 
• Lemonwood also has a very smooth surface and is ideal for detail. It gives a contrasting darker colour background when the varnish has been applied. Not good for portraits though.
• Ebony remains very popular. It is close textured and good for white designs.  Subjects with texture such as lizards and seahorses also work well because of the detail. Colour can be added, even just one… which can change the whole appearance. The overall results are soft and muted.
• An alternative to ebony is to choose a painted black background. I have found that if the colour needs to be more intense, then flooding the background on wood bobbins with black paint can make a real difference, particularly for something like an exotic flower, for fruit and for moths when the colour needs to be bright.
• Bone is great for painting. It is heavy and therefore not really suitable for Honitons. It is white and smooth of course and gives a translucent effect which is particularly good for portraits.

Three of our very best bobbin makers supply the bobbins. They are Acorn Bobbins (bone and ebony); Graham Hudson (holly and lemonwood) and Chris Parsons (holly, lemonwood and ebony). First they are sanded down to give a good base for the paint and if made of holly they are  primed and sanded again.  The designs are drawn using pencil before watercolour/gouache is used for the painting.  Several coats of gloss, polyurethane varnish are applied to give protection.  The bobbin is spangled using glass beads and a matching painted centre bead.